AT nine o’clock in the morning on this day, November 21st, exactly 100 years ago, Paddy MacCormack, a veterinary surgeon from Castlebar, was sitting up in bed in the Gresham Hotel in Dublin, reading The Irish Field.

Paddy had every reason to feel relaxed, despite the turbulent times prevailing in Dublin and nationwide. The War of Independence was at its height, and tension and danger was to be found around every corner. Paddy would have had good reason to feel immune from the trouble outside as he was on a particular mission of his own at the time.

He had recently returned from Egypt where he had been stationed as an officer in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps during World War I. His duties involved veterinary work relating to the rehabilitation of large numbers of horses, mules and camels. His job was to return as many as possible to remount depots.

Soon after the end of the war, Paddy was demobilised but he remained in Egypt, finding employment as a starter for the Jockey Club of Egypt, while also sourcing racehorses for the local racing scene. His youthful background spent hunting with the South Mayo Hunt, and his time riding in Ireland as an amateur, would have left him well qualified for his various roles in Egypt. It was the proposed purchase of racing stock for Egypt that had him back in his native land.

Paddy, under the wing of Fred Myerscough of the Irish Bloodstock Agency, was back home to buy horses from Senator Parkinson on the Curragh. Jim Parkinson, in a 51-year training career, turned out the winners of 2,577 races. He was a man well ahead of his time as he was selling horses to the farthest corners of the world in the early years of the 20th century.

Parkinson’s yard of over 100 horses would have been the obvious place for MacCormack to source his supply of racehorses for Egypt. Both men were qualified veterinary surgeons, while Myerscough and Parkinson were fellow directors of Goffs at that time.

Mission complete

Paddy MacCormack’s mission in Ireland was now almost complete, but problems were encountered arranging a passage back to Egypt for himself, his wife Mollie and their young daughter, along with the purchased horses. The planned sailing in October came too soon, which probably explained why Paddy was relaxing in the luxury of the Gresham Hotel, awaiting the next suitable sailing for family and horses.

Then all changed in an instant. A group of men, armed with revolvers and a sledgehammer, burst into MacCormack’s room and shot him five times. In an act of unimaginable brutality the sledgehammer was also used, leaving the victim’s face horribly mutilated. The Irish Field dropped to the ground as the killers made their escape.

Killers can be seamlessly transformed to patriots, and once that hallowed status is achieved the process is rarely reversed. And yet, the brutal nature of the killing of Paddy MacCormack displayed a level of butchery that transcended even the vicious wartime rules.

Paddy MacCormack had found himself innocently embroiled in one of the darkest episodes in Irish history.

Croke Park

Bloody Sunday will forever be associated with the slaughter of innocents by the infamous ‘Black and Tans’ at the Dublin-Tipperary match in Croke Park. The catalysts for that atrocity were the equally violent episodes earlier that day.

Michael Collins masterminded a plan to kill up to 35 British officers, mainly those involved in spying. When coordinated attacks took place at various locations around Dublin at nine o’clock that morning, 19 were shot, leaving 15 dead.

Paddy McCormack was most unfortunate to be included among the victims. Although he had been demobilised from the British Army a year previously, he signed the register in the Gresham Hotel as ‘Captain P.F. MacCormack’, and at a time of such heightened sensitivities that might well have been his fatal mistake.

Also, due to the scale of his planned operation, Michael Collins did not have sufficient manpower from his own ranks, so he sub-contracted some of the killings to the Dublin Brigade of the IRA. Unlike Collins’ men, the Dublin Brigade had no experience of intelligence work and they simply added names to the original list of targets.

We may never know exactly why Paddy MacCormack was targeted that day, but perhaps the fact that he was seen frequently coming to and from Dublin Castle worked against him.

Dublin Castle was the centre of British Intelligence, but it also housed various government offices. It seems entirely plausible that Paddy MacCormack was there to deal with the copious paperwork associated with his travel plans to Egypt.

Great grief

News of Paddy’s death was greeted with great grief and disbelief back in his native Castlebar. He had played a prominent role in the social life of the locality in his youth, and later when he first qualified as a veterinary surgeon. To find him branded “one of the chief English spies” was truly shocking to the townspeople who knew him.

However, it wasn’t long after the tumultuous events of Bloody Sunday that the realisation surfaced that his killing had been a mistake. A couple of years later his mother Kate wrote to Richard Mulcahy, then Minister for Justice, asking if somebody would admit that the killing of her son had been a mistake.

Kate MacCormack was a relative of Michael Davitt and, difficult as it was to come to terms with her son’s killing, his branding as a British spy made her great loss even harder to accept. She claimed that her son was “a good nationalist, albeit not a republican.”

Collins and Mulcahy both accepted Mrs MacCormack’s view and, in a private note to Mulcahy, Collins wrote “we had no evidence that he was a Secret Service agent ... some of the names were put on by the Dublin Brigade. So far as I remember, MacCormack’s name was one of these.”

The Scotchman

Paddy MacCormack’s widow, Mollie, was an O’Connor from Roscommon and her sister, Stella, was engaged to Tommy Burns (‘The Scotchman’) at the time of her husband’s death. Tommy will forever be remembered as part of the great triumvirate of ‘Canty, Burns and Wing’ who dominated the Irish flat jockeys’ scene for much of the early part of the 20th century.

Tommy and Stella had planned a lavish wedding with a reception in the Shelbourne Hotel. However, the dramatic events of Bloody Sunday changed all that and the marriage took place quietly on December 1st, 1920, just nine days after the bride’s brother-in-law was killed.

So, as you settle down to read this week’s The Irish Field, let us spare a thought for Paddy MacCormack, the innocent man who was doing exactly that same thing on this day 100 years ago.